I’ve spent a lot, if not the majority of my time writing the blog covering yuri games and while I enjoy the theme in pretty much all of its variants (outside of plain porn, at least), I quite rarely stumble upon an EVN that surprises me with its approach to lesbian romance or does something very unusual when setting up such a story. Thus, I was more than just a little intrigued when I’ve learned about Dharker Studio’s Highschool Romance: Magi Trials, a sequel to a “trap protagonist” romance VN, this time featuring magic and gender-bending of a much more thorough and permanent nature than simple cross-dressing, along with exclusively-female love interests. This yuri-and-not-yuri setup, coupled with cute, cartoonish art and non-pornographic approach to gender-bending, pretty much unique to the Highschool Romance series held a lot of promise – something I was very eager to verify.

                As I’ve mentioned in one of my recent posts on Dharker Studio, while the team has a very shaky record, especially when it goes to its early titles, the original Highschool Romance, released in late 2015, was a bit of a positive outlier, featuring charming art and a simple, but fun romance storytelling. Despite basing the plot on the idea of a male protagonist crossdressing to attend an all-girls school, it played with this theme in a cute and surprisingly non-offensive manner – the main character is not a pervert (or especially a sexual predator), but just a person forced to hide his true identity due to unusual circumstances, and the heroine arcs are, for the most part, very wholesome, with mild fanservice and teacher-student romance being the most “risqué” elements in them. Despite being a bit too short and basic, Highschool Romance made for a pleasant experience that I ultimately appreciated, and the sequel, transporting the same formula and artstyle into a fantasy setting, sounded seriously appealing. However, going through the Magi Trials, released on Steam in November 2016, reminded me that there’s more required than some interesting ideas and nice-looking art assets to make a genuinely good VN…